


tethered to grace and nostalgia

by toro (sapoeysap)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gift Giving, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/toro
Summary: impossible to deny the magic of december. settled deep in scarves and roscoe's howling to over produced songs featuring an overabundance of jingle bells.
Relationships: Lewis Hamilton/Daniel Ricciardo
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16
Collections: F1 Soup Kitchen Secret Santa 2020





	tethered to grace and nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babypapaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babypapaya/gifts).



> to soup chat, for the motivation and the soup. vio for hosting matching etc.  
> this is a year for being grateful for the littlest things, if just as something to keep you going. you are in the proverbial soup bowl keeping my heart very warm. 
> 
> to j, 
> 
> sorry you ended up with me. actually attempted the other prompt first and it was so sad i decided i could not subject you to that.
> 
> this is probably so far off what you wanted. but i pooled all your comments on my fic before and read your stuff to try and hit a ground of something i could write and you would enjoy. also truly i am so in awe of you every day and frankly i was nerve wracked to end up writing for you. can only apologise that this isn't the long burner you wanted. 
> 
> but there's daniel in a dress.

Thing is, it’s not exactly the most delicate of pieces. In fact, some, well most, might call it garish. Lewis himself will admit it’s outlandish. Obnoxiously pink, stupidly complicated. If money had mattered his eyes might water at the cost. Money hasn’t mattered for a long time, and he thanks God just at the mere thought that he can finally do this, for someone he loves. Without guilt or remorse. It will look beautiful. Almost misses the bright pink as the lingerie is folded into cream wrapping paper. Wonders if the boutique has inky black marble countertops specifically to help their products pop a little more.

By the time he steps out the boutique into the side street the store is hidden away down, the sun has dipped further down the sky, and London is even chillier. 

Even after a lifetime of London, Lewis will never deny the magic of the city in December. 

Maybe he romanticises it a little too much, for Daniel’s sake maybe. There’s a moment of guilt that they're not spending Christmas in Australia, for as much as London is magic. A Christmas summer is always a novel experience. But it’s their first time in the new flat for Christmas. That they finally have a home that is theirs together. Winter in Australia is not a thing to be looked down at. 

Lewis slides the sunglasses down his face, let’s himself be swallowed up by the city. In a second he’ll hit Oxford Street, blend in with the rest of London. Recognised maybe to a few who are aware. Used to the stares of those who think they know but can’t quite place him before he’s walked on by. Floats through the crowds of people with ease. Slides the headphones into his ears to block out the sound of the world. Headlights come round the dark bend of the tunnel. The tannoy sounds out, doors slide shut.

They pull off.

It’s practice, that Lewis knows when he’s at the right stop. Steps off and winds up the stairs because really, one hundred and eighty steps isn’t that much. 

Their flat is on purpose close enough to the tube station for them to feel as if they are connected to the city, but far enough away that it’s barely recognisable from balcony photographs. High enough that in those photographs and videos, it’s mostly about the brag of, we live this high that we can see the entire city spread out below us. This background character in our lives, much in the same way the viewers are. Lewis can’t feel bad about that at all. He has worked hard for this. They’ve worked hard for this.   
There’s a sound of singing leaking from the Flat when he finally makes it to the door. Impossible to hide the smile that tugs at his face. Knows that even if he schools it out, by the time he walks in and clocks eyes with Dan halfway through a hearty rendition of ABBA, that they will both be in giggles. At least Dan hasn’t been literal and decided to let them hear the drums. Perhaps it’s lucky they did invest in soundproofing when they’d moved in. Spending a week going back and forth with the interior designer on how to dot around the black squares of fabric while getting them to match with the LED strip lighting across the ceiling. Mostly to save their Neighbours from questioning about the heavy footfall of their dance routines. So that they don’t have to continually explain, yes this is from viral videos, yes we do make that much. Knowing Dan, he’ll have found any way to play the drums. Even if they don’t actually own a Drum Kit. 

Truthfully, it’s been an oversight on all three of them to not soundproof the front door. Glad no one else is in the hallway to see the blush remembering what the two of them did pushed against the same front door mere weeks ago. Choses to instead say ‘Siri, make a note to Install Soundproofing on the front door’ as he slides it open. Dan is slightly off-key, probably more from not really caring about the way he sounds than on purpose, about to launch into another rousing ‘there was something there for you and me’ . 

Tries his best to not have a moment of fear that in the few hours he’s been out, that there’s a new trend and he’s going to have to floss backwards to ABBA or something along those lines. 

Lewis will never ever forget about the things he is blessed with in life. Perhaps it’s the spirit of the season within him, but this is one of the moment he sends a prayer up. Just this tiny thanks. That this is his. It’s a small kingdom. But it’s still a kingdom.   
Daniel is singing to himself in the mirror that hangs over the sofa with his back to Lewis. So Lewis in a way is giving thanks to the way that the t-shirt dress drapes over Dan’s thighs. Long enough to show off the tight muscles from years of working out, long enough to not give more than a glimpse of the back of the tattoo that wraps round one thigh. For Lewis to cast an eye appreciatively over the ink, alongside the fading bruises he’d sucked into the un-inked skin on the other side three nights ago.   
They catch each others gaze in the mirror. When Dan does turn around, there is a tiny glimpse of ass clad in a disastrous pair of tight y-fronts. Leopard print and not at all co-ordinated with the soft washed dark blue of the dress. Plus the pair of fishnet’s that have been cut up beyond all compare, rolled half way down Dan’s calves. Barely clinging on.

Daniel smiles that wicked smile, the one that threatens to split his face in two. The one that Lewis has known for the longest. Confident and cocky. The first smile that he’d ever been given. Years ago, in what seems like a different life time. And every time Daniel flashes it. Lewis follows into whatever. 

There’s a glimmer of gold, looped in between Dan’s fingers. 

It’s Lewis favourite earring, the chain one. That loops from the back of his upper lobe all the way to the bottom.

Shudders almost imperceptibly at the ghost of the memory of the way Dan loves to run his finger over the shell of his ear, down the side of the b l e s s e d etched into his skin. Dan palms the earring carefully, stretches up on to tip toes, almost cat-like. Showing off and preening for Lewis’s attention. 

‘I was just toying, seeing what would fit, what would look good’, Dan sounds rather coy about it. Neither of them are going to mention that Daniel doesn’t have his ear’s pierced. 

Lewis thinks maybe they should talk about that. He doesn’t control what his partner does, what Dan chooses to wear or so on. But he wonders if Dan does want an ear-piercing. Already running through what would suit the most. Just a tiny singular gold hoop maybe. Understated and slightly nostalgic. Or perhaps a more complicated combination. 

It’s forgotten though in a second. Daniel’s hands pawing away at him. A greeting at being home. Chaste kisses, more concentration on making sure that the gift bag is out of the way of Dan’s hands. There’s something to be said for the way a fishnet-clad foot sneaks in-between his legs, catching on his jeans. Almost as if Dan is using it as a distraction. Lewis can feel the hands clipping the edge of the gift bag. 

‘I missed you’ 

‘I’ve been gone for two hours at most Ricciardo’ ‘Missed you anyways’

He’s swallowed up in kisses. Enjoys the way that every kiss Daniel gives tastes faintly of sugar, how the bulk packet of Vegan sweets Lewis buys for himself every month is open on the side. They’ve probably boosted Daniel’s mood more than anything else. While the LED lights they had installed are an aesthetic choice for the Vlogs, they're cycling through a dusky peach right now. Illuminating the two of them in golden hues. Lewis can’t help but mumble, ‘baby you taste like sunshine’. Dan tastes of Nostalgia as well, but Lewis doesn’t know and thinks he might never know how to put that into words. 

They end up sprawled out on the sofa. Daniel hasn’t quite worked out the full decorum of dresses, even after years of being comfortable enough to wear them around Lewis. And then the wider world. But he doesn’t mind the next flash of leopard print he gets treated too. 

At least the gift in the bag isn’t as tacky as what Daniel wears casually. 

He’s bored of waiting, it’s been just over an hour since he left the boutique. But he can’t wait any longer. Dan takes the gift bag kindly, let’s Lewis spread out into the v of his legs. Sits in-between and watches as Dan opens the bag, unwraps the tissue paper, midnight blue nail varnish chipping and bitten down in places that Lewis knows is a sign of Daniel being nervous. Wonder’s what Daniel needs to be nervous about. Is it in the same way that he’s nervous about if Dan will like his gift at this moment. Let alone the gifts that sit under the tree, wrapped in a mish-mash of wrapping paper. Some re-wrapped again because Roscoe’s chewed through them. 

So it’s so reassuring the way he physically feels Dan still behind him. The way the accent folds around, ‘Lewis this is beautiful’ 

‘Merry Christmas’ 

‘It’s December Tenth’ 

And yeah, that’s early. But, this is for now. 

‘Go put it on’, he says, in lieu of anything else.

Daniel disappears down the hallway with another kiss, a wink and a twirl. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Until there’s a shuffling and a huff. Roscoe padding into the room in Daniel’s place, and sure Roscoe isn’t beautiful in a classic way. But he’s still almost Lewis’ everything. Which is why he’s allowed on the sofa. Ambling up with a little assistance. 

Dan re-appears a few moments later. Still in the same t-shirt dress. The fishnets are gone though. It’s easy to think that nothing is different, Lewis, of course, knows better. 

They go about the rest of the day. Maybe they are a little handier with each other than normal, but the baseline of them is handsy anyways. Still, it’s hard to resist the urge to slip a hand up Daniel’s thigh, press into the love bites. Feel the satin that he knows is under the dress.

Instead, he calls Angela on face time. Props the phone up on the side of the toaster while he cooks. Daniel sneaks in with Roscoe and whisks the phone away to say his own hello’s to Angela. Looks down into the wok, and wonders how he got so lucky. That he is surrounded by people who love him, Daniel puts the phone back on the side. Angela gives a smile that even on the small iPhone screen looks delighted. It makes him happy, for a long time he’d been at wars with everyone. But Angela means the world to him. Now he’s stopped finally burning bridges. She feels still like a connection to his past while feeling like a mark on his way to now. On his way to the future. There is no way to express his gratitude to her. Not even in the presents that he knows will arrive on the 23rd, wrapped by his own hand. Eventually, they have to hang up. And they’ll see each other in the New Years. But it’s hard to say goodbye.

They eat, and Lewis can’t quite meet Daniel’s eye over the table. Mostly because of the foot nestled into his lap, rubbing slowly up his thigh. Dan, for some reason, has decided to set the table all fancy. Leaving them illuminated only by floor lamps and candles. 

It’s a seduction tactic. He’s closer to forty than he is thirty but feels all of twenty-two now. The way Daniel used to seduce him from behind a camera and in their dingy flat with mould on the ceiling. How they’d fallen in love for everyone to see. In the now, with Daniel’s foot teasing ever higher, it’s probably not appropriate to think about the first time Dan had come out of his room, unusually shy. Clad in a blouse cut for a different body shape. The bland bralette that hadn’t fit, with jeans in a cut that had been left behind in the early 2000s for a reason. Daniel had tasted of tacky gloss when Lewis kissed him that day. 

He’d brought a tube of Carmex in Boots the next day. Cherry flavoured. Alongside a makeup bag, pink and simple.

It was at the time, the easiest way Lewis could find to say, I support you. Ease in until Daniel found a lip gloss that didn’t taste tacky and horrible. 

He’d told Dan he loved him properly three weeks later. 

Roscoe coming to investigate dinner pulls Lewis from the memory.

‘Pretty deep in the thoughts tonight’, 

‘Reminiscing. Of when we had youth’ 

Dan smiles, Lewis smiles too, because he knows the next thing will be ‘Speak for yourself, I’m four years younger’

They wash up side by side. Roscoe chewing his own dinner noisily in the corner, until he’s content with Waitrose Finest Dog Food and plodding back out to go sleep off dinner.   
The Kitchen isn’t the sexiest place for seduction. He doesn’t want to complain though, not when he’s being picked up and put on to the kitchen counter. Kissed thoroughly. He’s still got ABBA stuck in his head, it’s morphing into a mix of Swedish pop. Lyrics echoing at random. Better than Tik Tok songs, probably. 

Dan knows how to wear a dress, and he knows how to remove a dress. 

And all thoughts of anything go out the window at the sight of Dan in the lingerie. The pink string and Swarovski crystals are quite possibly even more garish on Dan’s gamed honed body. He’d overestimated the sun-kissed tone, and the last time Daniel had shaved. Yet it doesn’t matter. 

It’s one of there finest quirks as a couple, the way they inevitably occasionally finish each other’s sentences. Dan saying ‘I know’, before Lewis manages the ‘You look stunning’. 

Maybe that’s what amps things up, the cocky way Daniel is. How he’s wearing a gift Lewis has spent hours researching and eventually buying. Only now he himself is the gift. A beautiful mutual loop. 

Lewis watches his own hands flex as they undo the knot that holds the pink thong together. 

It comes undone easily.

The thong flutters to the ground with a soft clatter, Swarovski crystals hitting the tiles.

He can almost hear how Daniel wants to protest into the silence. On how this was a waste of money to have been discarded so early in the night.

It’s not a waste at all. 

They have hours yet. No. They have a lifetime together. 

Wraps a hand around Daniel’s waist, brings them closer and closer. There’s something sexy in the way he’s still fully clothed on the counter side, while Dan stands there in just a bralette, straps slow coming undone not from being untied but from the way Lewis can’t help but run his hands over and over Dan’s entire body. The string not meant to withstand that sort of movement. Finally ceases the movement. Just to use both hands to bring Daniel’s head against his own. 

They’ve barely done anything, but Dan’s breathing is heavy against his lips. 

Daniel, who can never quite keep eye contact when they end up in this position, always fumbling off into giggles which leads them both into mutual laughter. In appreciation and warmth of one another.   
It’s one of Lewis’ favourite aspects of Daniel. That every moment, even the serious ones, the romantic ones, are taken with such joy, such reverence. 

They probably look a sight, but it’s their own space. No one else to see Daniel pick Lewis up. Or how Lewis wraps his legs around Daniel’s bare legs. Clinging on, moving his mouth to kiss up Dan’s neck while he’s carried to the bedroom. 

‘Love you’

Daniel doesn’t reply with words. Just with kisses. 

Lewis lets himself get pressed into the sheets. 

If he’s spent a long time worshipping Daniel, planning this. 

Then it’s only fair he let Daniel worship him in turn. 

In the after glow, tucked up content in one of Dan’s stupid The Smiths t-shirts, sleep finally threatening to pull him under. Is when he finally asks.

‘Did you like it’

Dan’s clearly further asleep than he himself is. 

It’s a sleepy reply. 

‘Yeah, just don’t go into the guest room until Christmas okay’

Dan’s asleep before Lewis can ask anything more

*

  
Christmas Eve, Lewis catches the pink lingerie set folded up in Daniel’s underwear draw. There’s a bottle of Calvin Klein One Lewis had brought Daniel the second Christmas they had been together for. Kept out of sentiment, and so that Dan’s boxers smell faintly of cologne that should have died off at the start of the 2010s. It’s funny, the way one draw can make him so nostalgic. Flip his stomach over a thousand times with butterflies. How nice it is, that he feels them, so long into the relationship. 

He’s only in here to get a set of boxers out, loose cotton in a pale yellow. With permission from Dan, still, a worry that he might be snooping around, stumbling upon a present accidentally so close to Christmas Day. There’s a jewellery box in there. Right on top of the pair of boxer’s he’s after. 

Open’s it. 

There’s a sheet of cream card stock, embossed with a logo that’s probably for one of the many hotel’s they’ve stayed in. Daniel has doodled on it, repeating DR3 in different variants, all in biro. Over the top, in a thick bright gold pen is. 

**Caught you peeking.**

Lewis sits on the side of the bed, clutching the box. 

He hadn’t thought It was anything more. But the fact it’s this. Is romance enough. 

While he changes, the box sits on the bed. Dresses in the boxers and a loose button-up black shirt, tiny threads of silver fabric woven through it. Chosen carefully to pair with the black velvet dress Dan has decided to wear tonight, one that’s very simple, classic t-shirt style. But pairs beautifully with all the jewellery Dan has chosen and pilfered from Lewis’s collection. 

They have no company bar Roscoe and the sound system. Lewis hopes they’ll sway around to Christmas music all night. A little tipsy on Bailey’s, Roscoe howling along. How Christmas should be, them, as a family.   
Scoops up the jewellery box, takes it out to Daniel.

‘Did you look underneath’ is the only response given.

He didn’t, afraid that there actually might be a present he spoils.

‘You have permission, why do you think I went to the toilet an hour ago.’

‘You planted this?’

‘Of course baby, I know what you are like when I put this dress on’ 

Dan twirls on his reply. 

Lewis opens the box up and flips the paper over again. 

There’s a business card, of his favourite tattoo artist, sat on the plush velvet bottom of the box in place of any jewellery. 

And on the back of the card stock, a rose is drawn.

‘We didn’t have matching tattoo’s yet, thought you were due another one’, Dan’s word’s don’t really matter. Lewis is so awestruck by the beauty in the drawing. How he knows, just knows, without asking for confirmation. Daniel drew this, for him, for them. 

‘Thank you’

‘Main presents even better. But you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for that.’

‘Really Dan, it means a lot, that you thought of this. That you drew this’

Stops, for a second. The word’s stuck in his throat.

‘That you did this, for us’ 

‘Come on, sentimental. Or you’ll make me feel even worse I’ve kept you all to myself tonight. We can still go to Midnight Mass if you want?’ 

It’s important, the way that Dan knows how much the church means to him. That Dan’s willing to drop their evening plans.

’Next year’ 

‘Yeah, next year. Besides. Chris Rea’s calling our name.’ 

He’s rewarded, by one of Dan’s most goofy laughs. 

‘You sound like me now, we can still make it to Mass. I’ll pray that you stop acting like me. So scary’ 

Shuts Daniel’s laughter up with soft kisses. 

They deserve this, to sway around, for Daniel to say ‘how are we driving home if we are already home’ in between kisses. Roscoe does howl along. Sneaks in between their legs while Dan flosses, unable to properly in the limited room the dress provides. They’ll go for a long walk tomorrow, let Roscoe run around the park. Wrap up warm and take photos for socials. But now it’s just them. 

Lewis gets pulled out of the thoughts, by a pouting Dan. 

‘Wait, if you found that present. Does that mean I get a Christmas Eve present’ 

**Author's Note:**

> the soundtrack to this is exclusively stormzy's blinded by your grace pt1 and pt2.  
> also maybe a bit of abba. and written to a bunch of 80s songs.
> 
> the end note here is really just, happy new year. 💛


End file.
